Can someone explain Ayn Rand to me?!

We are free to screw you over.

I wish I wasn't weak and helped people.

I remember reading about that one that says altruism debases a human being (the Virtue Of Selfishness, or something) and being mildly interested.

her appeal nowadays is sorta like rage against the machine, only for young republicans.

did anyone see that hbo movie with helen mirren as rand?

If you want to read her fiction, try Anthem, a short book that can be read in 45 minutes. Should be enough.

Then, I say, "Keep looking up... DEEZ NUTZ!!!"

ok, for books to read, i like we the living because it was from a point when she wasn't like "raawr compassion is evil", and atlas shrugged because it has a random pirate.

It worked!

Had a longtime amphetamine prescription for "weight control"; it is believed that this may have influenced some of her later behavior and decision-making.

Does anyone know what the latter is a reference to? I'm having a Monday Morning, and could do with stories of Objectivists inviting Ayn to fancy dinners, and her doing the hokey-cokey on the table.

If I want to read fiction by swivel-eyed maniacs, I'll stick w/Wyndham Lewis, thx. One of the few times I actually got scared on teh intarweb was when I looked at this deranged robotick rand fansite, and got the ph34r. What if these people find out I'm looking at their site? Can they find me, and hunt my ass down? It was like the pod-people in "...er argc, that film. The one where people come out of pods, and take over. Anyway, I suppose her whole life story & stuff in kind of interesting, but her followers - ick. God help us all if this thread gets googled pt 217.

(and of course let me know if anyone googles for "Ayn Rand porn")

Kate, we had this at our school too! Even though I thought a lot of the ideas in the book were pretty repulsive I entered anyway because I was desperate for money -- I wasn't exactly surprised I didn't win because it was torture just writing the essay.

When I was in college, my roommate dated a Randian goth who called his band "We the Living".

I hate to generalize, but Objectivism seems to appeal to mousy women and geeky men, NOT "alpha" men and women.

This is not so much a philosophy as it is a cult .

x-post : I know, "Randian goth" - it's just ridiculous.

Hokey Cokey.

What fletrejet said.

The point is that Rand and Hubbard were cultists. So what's your argument that there is a similar Chomsky cult? Especially when the people I know who tell me to read such-and-such by Chomsky are usually plain old liberals? Obviously if he's "dogmatic", it's not working too well.

Dogma : n. 1. That which is held as an opinion; a belief, principle, tenet; esp. a tenet or doctrine authoritatively laid down by a particular church, sect, or school of thought;

i.e., go with me or burn in (ideological) hell.

...so who's your guru, Don? Or are you too cool for that?

We can go 'round and around with the definition of "dogmatic", but near as I can tell, it wasn't out of line for me to use it in this context. More importantly, you spun my words to your own context--rather than ask for clarification, you simply started making assumptions. To wit, I posted that Rand reminds me of Hubbard and Chomsky in the way she inspires extremists. I didn't assert that Chomsky was a cultist or that followers of his intellect were. If it's guilt by association, that's not my fault. That's your reflexive defensiveness. Just because Chomsky's followers don't have some cult-like name for themselves doesn't mean that they don't come off as dogmatic. That's kind of my whole point. You're just annoyed that someone could put Rand and Chomsky in the same sentence together.

Oh, and why do I suddenly need some sort of guru? Is that a requirement for my existence? Why am I too cool if I don't have one? To be honest, I'd probably put my parent's name, or maybe my wife in that spot if you want to pin me down that badly.

I don't own a single Chomsky book, as a matter of fact - I'm too lowbrow for that, so let's stick to logical arguments and not speculation, please, as long as we're all trying to appear as independent-minded as possible.

I don't think Chomsky is a good comparison. I also dislike Chomsky's writing and think he's very obscurantist. He hashes his shit around to make it assume more relevance that it really has, and uses big words to make it sound like better ideas than it really is. If he could start from a solid, basic thesis, and also write it well, I would like him more. I like him best when he's interviewed by other people. The way he hashes shit around, I think you could call it facile, and also call Scientology and Objectivism facile, but I wouldn't call it dogmatic.

Ayn Rand's Objectivism is a facile, rationalizing cover for market-Nazism. Wealth-supremacy would also be a good term for it. The basic idea is that wealth should be the basic measure of everything, and all culture and politics should be oriented towards getting wealth and controlled by the wealthy. Ignoring of course, that there's a such thing as a cost of living, and that there can be no egalitarianism without a level playing field for how people make their living. Objectivism pretends that there's no such thing as coercion in the labor market, so all wealth distribution is meritocratic. It pretends to be egalitarian through "free trade."

For an example if how ridiculous that is, Ayn Rand supported child factory labor by saying "at least they aren't dead" and that laissez-faire capitalism gives people freedom by raising living standards, as if there wasn't such a thing as the Great Depression. She also hated there being a minimum wage. I wouldn't be surprised if she hated that there was such a thing as weekends, overtime, and retirement, too.

I think it's kind of wierd someone said she disliked homosexuals. That doesn't seem to fit because Objectivism calls itself "libertarian." (A perversion of classic libertarianism of course because it's anti-egalitarian- it means total liberty for how wealthy people spend their money, like child sex should be legal just because people want to buy it.) Also, on the "objectivism dating service" thread, someone said she was really into kinky sex.

Finally, while I regret making any assumptions--in this case, assuming what you would be annoyed about--it seems to me that you were doing quite a bit of assuming yourself, including that little tossed off line about me having a guru or not. I'm glad you confess to being lowbrow anyway. It's a lot more fun down here, as you well know.

Transcription from a TV interview on 25 Nov 1992

JOHN PILGER: And yet you’re often described as an extremist
CHOMSKY: Sure. I am an extremist. Because a ‘moderate’ is anyone who supports western power, and an extremist is anyone who objects to them.

admittedly, it drives you up the wall that I did that.

Apparently, you enjoy "driving (certain) people up the wall", or at least imagining that you do. Maybe it's just because I don't see legions of Chomskyites all over the 'net - it's just not the same author / audience relationship, and I don't find your characterization convincing. If you pursue your thinking to its logical conclusion, than anyone who closely follows a prominent thinker is "dogmatic". It just seems like an anti-intellectual argument at its core.

And as for the legions of Rand-ites and Hubbard-ites on the 'net, I don't ever and have never seen them. I didn't run into them in undergrad or grad school either, but I sure as shit knew a lot of people who were familiar with Chomsky. So if it's merely my experience that is guiding my perspective on this, I apologize. I'm sure there are a lot of Objectivists and Scientologists on the Internet but I have not ever run into one.

As for what I enjoy doing or imagining what I enjoy doing, I thought we were going to stop making assumptions. Whatever.

Obviously because everyone around here is so much smarter than me, I've lost the argument, and I must resort to desperation in order to preserve my precious dignity. After all, Chomsky isn't anything like Ayn Rand. He's not extreme in any way, there is not even the slightest amount of dogma to anything he does, none of his followers are dogmatic in any way, and if I didn't have massive self esteem problems I wouldn't end up playing the house asshole on every political thread that I have time to participate in. Sucks to be me.

----------------

"Best Books...chosen by Chuck Klosterman"

ATLAS SHRUGGED - "People who are intellectual (but not necessarily smart) constantly insist that Rand's philosophy is simplistic and flawed, and maybe it is; no philosophy is perfect. But she makes more sense than anyone else I've ever experienced. If you disagree with Atlas Shrugged, it basically means you disagree with the concept of 'being great.'"

That is fucking hilarious Eisbar.

Also, did anyone see that Ayn Rand movie on Showtime (I think it was Showtime)? I saw parts of it, but only because I love Helen Mirren.

So, while there certainly is a crazy component to the Cult Of Rand, it's very easy to scoff at its ideas when you come at them from a position of privilege.

No, just sarcasm, Don, and it does nothing for your dignity.

Most of the people I consider 'great' don't have the capitalist/materialist worldly whatsits - money, power, fame, etc. - that Randian Libertarians/neo-cons seem to be so wowed by.

rand's "cult," on the other hand, seems to have been inspired by her writings and her personality. her philosophy has a sort of "my way or the highway" mindset built into it. as with chomsky, that isn't bad in itself -- except that rand purports that her philosophical system is both internally consistent and complete. it's all Torah and no Talmud, if you will, with no room built in for clarification or modification of the basic text -- no toleration for hermeneutics, at least as far as miss rand and her most devout followers were concerned. additionally, miss rand and her coterie ("the collective," they called themselves -- apparently, randism doesn't totally sap its adherents' senses of humor) were notoriously fond of excommunicating people, essentially for not seeing things the way miss rand did (or, at least wr2 one very famous randian dust-up, b/c the guy she was fucking was fucking another woman on the side!) whatever else one can say about chomsky, i simply don't see either the same close-mindedness or willingness to excommunicate coming directly from him (some of the more fanatical of his supporters, that may be a different story).

"Personally, I’m not a committed pacifist, so I think that, yes, [violence] can sometimes be justified."

Chomsky quote here; this is a sentiment he's expressed elsewhere as well. He qualifies it heavily, so not sure if this makes him "extreme" necessarily. (Even without knowing the context, I'd guess that the "I'm an extremist" quote Don referenced upthread was ironic - Chomsky labelling himself with others' terminology.)

x-post w/ Tad

"Semantics" or whatever aside, I don't think it's a hugely controversial thing to claim that Chomsky has many, MANY uncritical devotees on the left, and that these attitudes are not only a hindrance to accomplishing anything but also contrary to Chomsky's anarcho-whatever ultra-critical politics.

Markelby, if I had any damn dignity I wouldn't be spending this much time chasing my tail.

Andrew - I don't really think it was a great quote, to be perfectly honest. But I found it within about ten seconds of Googling and don't really feel like going to better sources i.e. Lexis to get more appropriate comments. Perhaps Chomsky isn't an "extremist", but he's certainly in the far part of the left; there really aren't that many avowed pacifists around anymore, so in that he seems a bit on the extreme. It would be fun to spend a day Googling and Lexis-ing Chomsky just to find a bunch of radical type of quotes to post but it's really beside the larger point anyway.

And Eisbar, despite me mouthing off to you in the past (sorry about that, I was a dickhead) you have put my original quote into perfect context. Not that you necessarily tried or wanted to, but thanks for making my case.

The idea of "strong" Will as a determining force in human society is for the egotistical and iniquitous.

Hi Don, that was me, not Andrew. Anyway, the point wasn't to contradict, just qualify; I don't think Chomsky would have a problem with "far left" (I distinctly remember him labelling himself a "conservative"(!!) once but didn't follow up on what his idiosyncratic def. might be).

in general he's usually pretty dismissive of protests etc. as cute but ill-informed and not that effective too, harbors no pro-direct-action stance w/r/t the anti-glob protests, etc.

Fuckers.

Just because someone you know who wasn't privileged, who latched onto it and then succeeded- isn't relevant to the truth of Ayn Rand's stuff any more than being born-again christian, scientologist, or Moonie would be to those ideas.

The vast majority of ILXors who are criticizing Ayn Rand on this thread are exactly the same set of people she posits will/should control the world. It is really easy to say, "This isn't right, life shouldn't work that way" when you are doing so from a position of power and/or privilege. My father was inspired by the idea of a meritocracy, which is really what Ayn Rand's philosophy boils down to (an evil, heartless, untenable meritocracy with several glaring caveats, but nevertheless the core of the philosophy is that people who are successful deserve the greatest rewards) at a time when the world around him was going through a severe upheaval; we're talking about a man who remembers being made to switch to the back of the train car when going to down to visit relatives in Alabama, a man who as a boy won the right to go on a trip to a conference to DC, only to be told once he got there that he wasn't allowed to actually go inside and eat with all of the white kids, someone who saw first-hand the Civil Rights movement unfold and the attendant opening of possibilities that came with it. We're talking about a startlingly intelligent man with a strong work ethic and an aptitude of inorganic chemistry who grew up in a world that told him over and over that he would ever only be allowed to go so far because of the color of his skin.

Explain how a meritocracy theory wouldn't be like a lightning bolt of realization to this man, however flawed the source is.

i hear what yer saying, dan, though i really don't feel very much like an "elite." i certainly don't live like one.

I think you're missing the point that aside from being self-congratulatory and fundamentally impossible, Rand's dogma basically boils down to "don't give up on your dreams." You're making it out like she's totally evil.

Also, I think it's not in support of born privilege. (That's one thing that makes it impossible.) The heroes in Atlas Shrugged are born in rich, powerful families but they sneak out in summers and work at really basic entry-level jobs instead of the cushy opportunities they're offered because they want to work their own way up (and of course they do). That might have been impossible had they not been born into the families that owned the companies, and it certainly doesn't happen that way in the real world, but she *wanted* a pure meritocracy. She said, however, that one already existed, people just didn't try hard enough in it. That's what makes Objectivists think her philosophy IS egalitarian (we could certainly argue that, but my point is she's not evil!).

That doesn't address your actual question, Dan can address that one because I'm fairly sure I count as privileged.

Dan I appreciate how a person can be attached to something that inspires them. Your father sounds like he deserves success. Still don't see how there should be any problem with criticising Ayn Rand any more than if you said your father was a born again christian, scientologist, or moonie.

Religion gave a lot of inspiration to the civil rights movement too. That's OK with me, but I think what was important is the people in the movement and not the church, pope or other symbols. Those I scoff at, people who preach to me I scoff at, because I don't like religion, but people who try to lead by example are usually OK with me. I don't know if that sounds callous or not, but just consider what else religion has inspired. Consider how in the middle of an AIDS epidemic in Africa, religious leaders are at the front of the people banning safe sex from being promoted, and the heads of state say they will enforce the pope's teaching of abstinence while millions of people die. Following that example consider Ayn Rand's advocacy of child labor. Should religion get respect? I don't think so. I might be wrong about that because it is only something that's tought and people have a choice about believing it. I don't think Ayn Rand should either, but I'm more sure of that. Even leading by Ayn Rand's example and not preaching it puts you among people who exploit others.

Oh yeah, and about the majority of people on this thread criticising Ayn Rand, being "privileged" a) how do you know b) I know people in the arts and writers, like many people on this forum, have a hard time staying employed c) why can't you be privileged and criticise things that are wrong?

Aside from having education and sometimes, but not always, a roof over my head, I don't have this privilege you speak of, I sure don't own a bit of the capital that Ayn Rand's fake meritocracy is based on.

then again, rand (as with so many other rationalists) ended up veering sharply into "natural law" concepts (i.e., what bentham rightly called "nonsense on stilts.") hence, the particularly strident dogmatism of rand and her most devout followers. which is why in the end i'm an empiricist (and a very cynical one at that -- WHO IN THIS BITCH LIKES HUME?!?) and oh yeah, to tie this in with someone else being bashed herein -- chomsky is also a rationalist.

i fear i'm not making any sense.

Ie. a half-baked pseudo-philosopher who ventures into "the novel form" without the slightest regard for the several types of ambiguity which fiction requires, viewing it only as a vehicle for (ahem) "ideas"?

In which case "the novel" turns on its author and exposes her presumptions more efficiently than any analysis of her "philosophy" ever could.

Science is a method of gaining knowledge by systematically studying things that actually exist and have real effects. The notion that someone's health can be affected by the prayers or wishes of strangers is based on nothing but imagination and faith. Such blind belief represents the rejection of reason and science, and is not worthy of serious, rational consideration. What's next? A study of the medical effects of blowing out birthday candles?

Every minute these doctors spend conducting this sort of faith-based study is one minute less spent on reality-based research--research that actually has hope of leading to real medical cures.

Dr. Yaron Brook
Ayn Rand Institute Executive Director
Irvine, CA

Ayn Rand's "objectivism" is great as a personal philosophy if you see yourself as hard-working, skilled, independent, and intelligent. It's not so hot as a social or political philosophy. As tempting as it sometimes sounds, I've never been able to leave my friends for new associates that share some crazed level of intellectualism and instinctive drive, which is probably fortunate. Rand's absolute meritocracy would be great given a completely level playing field but then she'd lose the plot device of dramatically shunning or turning your back on the establishment and its corrupt ways.

i.e. on the unpopulated sands of mars

ps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_abolitionism

It's actually testing hypotheses and seeing what happens, if you knew beforehand what the "real effects" were you wouldn't need to do any studies to see if they were real or not. If you're a God vs Science type and you're on the side of science it seems like it would be more useful to have an empirical test proving prayer doesn't work than to just say "we don't need to test it, it's obvious". It's using two things to prove each other, saying that prayer is useless because there is no proof and that there's no point getting proof because prayer's useless. It might be obvious, but it's worth testing non-obvious things too.

http://media.urbandictionary.com/image/large/orly-37424.jpg

mike h OTM about personal v. political.

"Yes, at first I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical, but then I read this: Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of shit, I am never reading again." - Officer Barbrady

Number of Playboy centerfold models since 1959 whose bios claimed their favorite book was by Ayn Rand: 12 [Gretchen Edgen, The Playmate Book, General Publishing Group (Santa Monica, Calif.)]

More like "philosopher." I mean, you can claim that anyone who comes up with ideas about the material world and personal interactions is a philosopher, but western philosophy was already reasonably stratified by the 20th century. To most people actually studying philosophy, Rand is pretty much treading over territory that's already been well-covered and refuted. It'd be like calling someone a "mathematician" after they refused to study established work then came up with pi being about 3.2 after thinking about it.

You would think "well, duh," and yet you can probably get some philosophers still to disagree about this.

It seems sometimes like philosophers try to simplify things too much. I mean "reality" is so complex, how can one theory really describe everything?
I once watched a porno that discussed the philosophy of PLato.

The professor said Plato had a vision for a perfect society but it would never work becuase rich people will always want to "bed down" hot women who are plebians.

Why am I not surprised at ALL that this is in Irvine?

Without any explanation, this statement doesn't really mean anything. When you try and explain what it means, I think you'll find plenty of philosophical opposition however you go about doing it. As far as I can see, there's still no real consensus on epic, vague metaphysical issues like this.

For instance, she backed Ronald Reagan --a worthless protectionist / pragmatist who was for sale to the highest bidder, and incapable of understanding basic economics. She also termed libertarians "Hippies of the Right" - a vague ad-hominem attack, among others, even though they virtually all espoused her political model (if not privately her philosophical model). She did this without bothering to think about what the results would be, if the Libertarian Party (the only consistent capitalist / pro-individual freedom choice in politics) lost one of its major bases of suport -objectivists (even the ones who dissented with varying portions of her philosophy). She gave them short shrift because the movement wasn't entirely controlled by her. One of her students, Leonard Peikoff, seemingly initially sought to widen the tent, and thus expand the ideas of individual sovereignty and autonomy to a wider (though lower common denominator) audience (much like this one, Dan Perry excluded). Upon taking over the ARI, Peikoff backpedaled in a desire to maintain Randian consistency (her legacy), and his initially more positive direction collapsed to orthodoxy.

Peikoff's book, however, still stands as one of the most accurate books ever written about political philosophy (The Ominous Parallels). Read it.

Keep in mind that most of the people on this board are just state-worshipping simpletons throwing pebbles at a target that's not bothering to defend itself. They undoubtedly vote for who mommy and daddy told them to vote for, no matter how many lives it ruins, how many innocent people go to jail, or how many people die for lack of drugs that their uncaring police-state hasn't 'approved' for us serfs yet. These are the stupid bitch college kids that never would have made it to college if it weren't for FAFSA -on the backs of everyone who works for a living. These are the dumbasses who mindlessly come out, like HG Wells' sacrificial Eloi, to vote to maintain the status-quo, without having any comprehension of what the current status-quo is ("I'm comfortable now, so I'll just vote not to change anything, or to investigate what's happening or why"). For instance, they allegedly hate Rand's attacks on altruism as a primary virtue -never refuting the fact that enforced altruism is responsible for vastly more bloodshed than any other philosophy, and that pure altruism (holding others' goals higher than your own) produces economic failure. They even incorrectly compared her views to Soviet style views, out of a mindless desire to smear her, (no doubt for any of a billion contemptible reasons, most of which revolve around misdirected jealousy) --read "We the Living" before you take their assertions at face value.

Nonetheless, the fact that ARI wishes to remain a closed system limits its evolution and effectiveness, and has allowed it to stagnate (as well as marginalized its possible political effectiveness). Thus, for all the people too ignorant of history and logic, there is no current positive example for true capitalists to point to (it's been my experience that when there is a current positive example to point to, it makes the irration about twice as likely to register to vote as a libertarian, or consider doing so with an open mind... "conservative/liberal jackass see, conservative/liberal jackass do --but not before").

For those here who want to begin studying rational philosophical thought, I recommend avoiding all areas of philosophy beyond basic Rand (For the New Intellectual, The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism the Unknown Ideal) and Spooner (No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, An Essay on the Trial by Jury). For online objectiviity, you're better off at David Kelley's "Objectivist Center" http://www.objectivistcenter.org/ . You'd be infinitely better off studying science and actually doing something useful with your time though, even if you're not smart enough to have arrived at individualist objectivity on your own (Without a push from Rand or her conflicted institute).

If you're totally uneducated about economics and politics though, you can't do any better than these links:
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills
http://www.lysanderspooner.org
http://www.cato.org
http://www.movimientolibertario.org
http://www.lp.org
http://www.ij.org
http://www.fija.org
http://www.reviewjournal.com/columnists/suprynowicz.html
http://www.reason.com

Most of you, from the looks of things here, won't be able to understand too much of what you read --but please, invest the time for my sake, and the sake of all the poor people you care about oh so very much (the same ones whose businesses were closed for want of protection pay by your tax-financed thugs, and whose gangbanger kids were miseducated by your crappy collectivized propaganda camps that pass themselves off as 'public' schools, and all the poor people your damned drug-warriors have put behind bars or in the ground with their destructive black market-generating brutality). Then, maybe you could actually contribute a criticism that would have some sort of constructive effect instead of just spouting misplaced hatred for one of the very few philosophers who had a grasp of simple property rights. (The same dwindling property rights that allow you to live.)

The real reason most people on this chatroom are so against a true meritocracy is because they know that if they lived in one, they'd have to work smarter, not harder, and the one thing they fear most is being forced to think in order to survive.

Lots of Love and Good Cheer,

Jake

in your ideal society, what should happen to those who fail?

or is just 'not your problem'?

i mean, i really shouldn't be encouraging you by enganging with your 'ideas' but i want to know how you and your ilk think.

i guess this is the ultimate implication that bothers me.

OMG W R JUST JELOUS!

How do we look from up on that precipice? Like ants? I'm glad that you, above all others, has the "correct" interpretation of Rand's philosophy to which she failed to live up.

For those here who want to begin studying rational philosophical thought, I recommend avoiding all areas of philosophy beyond basic Rand

How is this any different from religion? Kids, don't read any scriptural criticism or any philosophical work that predates our sacred text! It might contradict or draw attention to issues with our work.

The harsh romanticizing of personal work and economics that Rand engages in borders on single-minded ridiculousness. Is it at all possible that someone's life's work could be raising their own child, or that someone could be satisfied with putting in a mind-numbing day of mediocre work in trade for an enjoyable social life? Both of these are completely reasonable yet the exact lifestyles that would be vilified as boring. Not everyone is dumbly stumbling through life and creating a system of nepotism, inefficiency, and protectionist controls on purpose. It just kind of happens sometimes when you're trying to accomplish things while having better things to do with your free time.

For those here who want to begin studying rational philosophical thought, I recommend avoiding all areas of philosophy beyond basic Rand

Go you! Bon courage! Keep those blinders on tight! And whatever you do, don't ever develop a sense of humor.

Radical individualists seem to enjoy being told what to think, don't they?

actually, any economics student who spouted out randian nonsense in class at my college would have either (a) been mocked mercilessly (amongst those who cared); or (b) been met with total indifference. and since my undergrad school was the one that sprang milton friedman on the world (a fact the econ. dep't never let econ. majors forget), that's saying something.

I was told today that the real victims of oppression are those in "the productive class."

pretty funny radio interview here with al ruddy, who spent years trying to make an atlas shrugged movie. his descriptions of dealing with rand and the randians are great.

Whoa you are whistling for Vision (or whatevs his name is) to come rail hotly & obfusticate meaning.

haha. i think ruddy describes objectivists as being crazier than scientologists. anyway, the actual link to listen is on this page. on the plus side, he says ayn was pretty sexy.

lolz Vision is a rand fan? that explains a lot

Whenever I read Garu G's posts I like to picture Ayn Rand.
― walter kranz (walterkranz), Tuesday, 2 August 2005 01:50 (3 years ago) Permalink

Seen on a 'staff recommendations' shelf in a local Waterstone's: Atlas Shrugged (or was it The Fountainhead), with the hand-written card declaring that "it is hard to come up with rational arguments against her philosophy".

Q: Does pompous certainty disbar you from being a philosopher or does it make you a particular kind of philosopher?

I bet there is a Dinosaur Comics about that!

Whoa you are whistling for Vision (or whatevs his name is) to come rail hotly & obfusticate meaning.

― Abbott of the Trapezoid Monks (Abbott), Monday, November 10, 2008 10:42 PM (30 minutes ago)

Haha! First thing I thought of!

It is great when he makes fun of your user name. Great!

No, no it really isn't.

I mean "enormously silly and childish."

thankyou

http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n200/youngstunna5/candyman.jpg

That is usually what I mean when I say something is "great," which comes from a childhood of not being allowed to use "bad words."

That's a great word. ; )

more like

http://petewarden.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/10/31/beetlejuice.png

Ah, the mot juste.

oh no! douchebags who either engineered or enabled our current economic shitpile and fancy themselves modern-day John Galts are going on a "brain strike"!! OH NO!!!

She looks like Greenspan with a wig.

Well, she DOES have a sense of humor (not really exhibited in her books unfortunately) -- and lol @ how she loves "charlie's angels" and how much she sounds like Alan Alda or David Van Driessen re how "real men" should not suppress their feelings.

Who cares if Atlas shrugs now? He's already dropped the planet.

Can you say "conservative cunts" boys and girls? I knew you could!

Ayn Rand's zombie presence makes perfect sense. Indeed, her lit cred, thoroughly middlebrow and thus utterly American, lends her capitalist fantasies some theoretical weight. Rand fancied herself as high-minded, an intellectual counterbalance to Karl Marx. In truth, Rand was closer to Walt Disney, minus the Mouse King's showbiz flair. Each used cartoons to convey their message. Both were dedicated anti-communists, hostile to organized labor, friendly to the post-war Red Scare. Only Rand felt that the U.S. government wasn't going deep enough in uprooting commies, primarily those in Hollywood, hypnotizing Middle America with phony smiles and pretty songs while undermining free enterprise and its besieged supporters....

Heller also note(s) that Rand considered the dollar sign "a better symbol than the cross, because it didn't require the sacrifice of anybody." I trust that Heller doesn't share this ahistorical view. Not only have the cross and dollar enjoyed a lucrative, long-running alliance, the dollar requires massive sacrifice across the planet. Poverty, starvation, environmental damage and genocidal violence are some of the dollar's greatest hits. Use any calculator you like to tally the body count under state socialism, and it'll explode when computing the ongoing ravages of global capitalism.

http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2009/11/atlas-insolvent.html

Indeed, her lit cred

what??????????????????? she has no lit cred.

w/ people who buy books, and biographers, apparently

shooting fish in a barrel

thoroughly middlebrow and thus utterly American,

stfu

xp It would be a better world if that fact was as obvious to everyone as it is to us.

I enjoyed the piece in slate from a couple days ago: http://www.facebook.com/fluxion23?ref=profile

um

Oh. Sorry.

http://www.slate.com/id/2233966

ah

She looks like Greenspan with a wig.

― Goth As A Moth (Bimble)

Perfect.

comparing ayn rand to walt disney is an obscene insult to disney.

I like the comparison in the Slate story much better -- to L. Ron Hubbard.

Slate's latest batch of philosophy essays have been...highly variable, like this ludicrous Hannah Arendt piece

alfred that link just goes to a big list of ron rosenbaum articles for me

Whoops: http://www.slate.com/id/2234010/

Glad I'm not the only one. :)

The banality of Ron Rosenbaum

You're right, that article is horrible.

"Internalizing" lol

The banality of Latinates.

atlas shrugged was boring

also kindof offensive

"lit cred" = high schoolers read Anthem and so think Ayn Rand is Serious Literature.

the arendt piece is one of the worst things i've ever read on slate. incredibly ignorant and hysterical. has rosenbaum always been an idiot?

The tone most offends me -- the smug assurance with which he thinks we'll agree that the banality of evil is a hackneyed phrase.

especially because his own idea of what evil actually is (bad people apparently ALWAYS know what they're doing, and revel in the fact of their evilness) is so laughable.

i get the sense that most of the people who criticize arendt's calling eichmann "banal" haven't even read that book. she hardly lets him off the hook.

And she endorses the death penalty for him!

In fact, the imaginary judgment she wrote for the prosecutor is the best case for a one-shot application of the death penalty I've ever read.

My understanding of "the banality of evil" is that it refers more to the collusion of millions of otherwise apparently mundane civilians than it does to the actions of ideologues and high-ranking Party officials.

ron rosenbaum is a maroon

My understanding of "the banality of evil" is that it refers more to the collusion of millions of otherwise apparently mundane civilians than it does to the actions of ideologues and high-ranking Party officials.

Yes, true, and also: Eichmann the family man didn't act like Conrad Veidt.

I'm all for intelligent criticism of The Origin of Totalitarianism, whose first third splinters into discrete chunks that don't really advance her theses yet if treated as such make for fascinating reading. Rosenbaum doesn't have time for it.

as far as i can tell this is his argument

1) i, ron rosenbaum, hate the phrase "the banality of evil"
2) luckily, no one will use the phrase "the banality of evil" any longer because people have recently pointed out that hannah arendt uses anti-semitic sources in her work
3) therefore, hannah arendt is a self-hating jew
4) hannah arendt is a self-hating jew because she was in love with martin heidegger
5) martin heidegger was a nazi through and through and there is absolutely nothing of value in his philosophy
6) i know there is nothing of value in his philosophy because a) i didn't understand and b) internet commenters at the chronicle for higher education website didnt explain it

7) How on earth could Arendt have fallen in love with an unrepentant Nazi?

I feel like this bit is the crucial sub-text:

It's a concept that has great relevance right now because there are still those who don't understand how theocratic police states can be called "fascist." Duh! It's because they're totalitarian. Whatever religion they profess, what they share with past fascist regimes is greater—in terms of denial of human rights—than what separates them. Just as political regimes adopt religious-type totalist worship of the state or the leader to enforce their oppression, religious or theocratic regimes adopt political oppression to enforce their orthodoxies.

The whole piece isn't really about Arendt or Nazi Germany but about Iran and whoever else is in this year's Axis of Evil, and Rosenbaum is arguing for a hawkish US stance because you can't negotiate with Fascists.

h8 this ho

"Just as political regimes adopt religious-type totalist worship of the state or the leader to enforce their oppression, religious or theocratic regimes adopt political oppression to enforce their orthodoxies." Wtf does the "just as" mean here?

and ALL regimes are "political."

that essay...

saw a documentary once bout arendt and heidegger's relationship, was pretty okay, like there was some cool "brief encounter" lookin re-enactments and a shitload of speculation like "arendt was prolly conflicted"

Come on, people
Oooh, so daring!
Duh!

http://timothyzhu.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/bill_cosby1.jpg
Come on people!

wake up, sheeple!

THE NAME IS HARVEY. HARVEY WEE-WAX.

The interesting thing about the libertarian saint is that she was also virulently anti-religion.

This could, and should, be exploited.

anti-democratic too

also russian

and ugly

did anyone mention that she is totally creepy and when she writes about sex its like fucked up slash

"The interesting thing about the libertarian saint is that she was also virulently anti-religion.
This could, and should, be exploited."

What's the game plan?

holy war

the banality of evil is a hackneyed phrase.

did anyone mention that she is totally creepy and when she writes about sex its like fucked up slash

So many books have this problem. Sophie's Choice, anyone?

So even now with the cloud of fear around her, while he taunts her and abuses her - even now her pleasure is not mere mild enjoyment but the perennially re-created bliss, and chill waves shiver down her back as she sucks and sucks and sucks. She is not even surprised that the more he torments her scalp, the more he goads her with the detested "Irma," the more gluttonous becomes her lust to swallow up his price, and when she ceases, just for an instant, and panting raises her head and gasps "Oh God, I love sucking you," the words are uttered with the same uncomplicated and spontaneous ardor as before. She opens her eyes, glimpses his tortured face, resumes blindly, realizing now that his voice has become a shout which begins to echo from the flanks of the rock strewn hill… The delicious marble palmtree, the slippery trunk swelling and expanding, tells her that he is on the edge of coming, tells her to relax so as to accept the pulsing flood, the seawater gush of palmtree milk, and in that instant of hovering expectancy, as always, she feels her eyes brim over with stinging inexplicable tears.

Rand, sadly, doesn't even have that much competency at writing a sex scene. Which is saying -- if you'll pardon me -- a mouthful.

Also see: all science fiction evar.

She also shares the problem of the subtlety of exposition with sf. Her characters exposit her philosophies at length, and with no transition more elegant than from one song on the radio to the next. "And now, my character will say all the things he thinks, and it will be clear that I either agree or disagree with this particular character's opinion." It's bargain-basement shit, it really is.

I tried reading one of her books in high school but abandoned it after she explained that no-one can ever truly perform an altruistic action because everything you do is inherently self-serving. Even as a moody self-wallowing teenager it was too narcissistic of an outlook for me. BS.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2010/8/12hague.html

Ayn Rand Philosophy: MINE, MINE ALL MINE AND YOU CAN'T HAVE IT HAHAHAHAHA!!!

I see Randianism as a slight wrinkle on basic Calvinism, which included the idea that moral rectitude was rewarded by God with material prosperity, so therefore it was possible to gauge who among the upright was the most upright and who among the righteous was most righteous, by looking at their wealth. After all, because God has predestined all of us to our lot, it would be unthinkable that God would knowingly reward purity and righteousness with illness, poverty, misfortune and endless fruitless labors.

This was always a crock, but it has just enough of the Grasshopper vs. Ant fable in it to appear mildly plausible.

well, in rand's defense (not that i would), she ups the credibility of her argument by removing divine providence from the equation. thus one's material station in life derives not from preordained destiny, but from the congruence of one's actions & abilities with a sort of logical morality, the basic desire of the universe, or some such. which makes the whole thing harder to dismiss out of hand. though i still do, ha ha ha.

Aimless you do realize it's really easy to call Randianism a crock without pretending it has anything to do with God

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/2010/08/worldsbiggestwriting-660x647.jpg
“The main reason I did it is because I am an Ayn Rand fan,” he says. “In my opinion if more people would read her books and take her ideas seriously, the country and world would be a better place — freer, more prosperous and we would have a more optimistic view of the future.”
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/08/worlds-biggest-writing/

can someone explain that man to me?!

melvillean 7 hours ago

I would write "Don't" in Canada.

if she was alive today she'd have a vv quotable column on 'the corner'

"The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky."

- Flannery O'Connor

Ayn Rand is an extremely interesting personality because of the historical and pop culture references she makes. Her work is sort of a document of mid-century economic and social relations. I highly recommend the documentary "A Sense of Life", it spends a lot of time on her Hollywood roots and her affection for the early film industry. As a media phenomenon she is very interesting. But she praises individualism and I don't understand how this squares with how some of her followers use her. I don't think a lot of them see her as a historic persona. I don't think they know a lot about Russia or respect her Russian roots.

If she were alive today she'd get a lot of attention, not all of it from "followers". I am not sure she would enjoy being cited as an influence by tea partiers, for example. She seemed to do everything possible to deter that sort of hero worship.

I don't think her fiction is that hot either but it is illuminating, again for its historic relevance. In the same way that detective fiction might be. I thought the "great books" model died with postmodernism.

She seemed to do everything possible to deter that sort of hero worship.

not true at all

that "Sense of Life" documentary is terrible btw.

I agree that she is fascinating though and was in many ways a remarkable if rather repugnant person.

Why is "A Sense of Life" terrible? Not too many documentaries are about a Russian immigrant getting her start in early Hollywood.

It white-washes basically everything about her!

It's total hagiography

have not seen the doc. i only know that, "she seemed to do everything possible to deter that sort of hero worship" = lolz for days.

You want to be the most right person on the earth, go ahead. I am sorry I spent any worthless time on something that seems to have influenced a lot of people. I should spend more time mining ilx for lolz that I can dwell on for days. As for the hero worship stuff, it's in the bios about her alienating her followers, if you care to read them.

The film isn't hagiography at all! It's about cultural context.

Rejecting/ostracizing those in her circle who disagreed with her does not equal "discouraging hero worship".

no, i don't mean to deny yr appreciation of the cultural context-setting thing, but want to inject a measure of perspective re: her relationship to the cult of her. she built that shit.

PSST:

http://vimeo.com/13589866

I love how this thread never gets revived without somebody being a hard-on about Ayn fucking Rand.

8==================D ---------------------------- [abt] AR

The day must have its night. We must have our Ayn Rand.

She is the tails to our heads on the Promethean coin.

Those two posts are an illustration of what makes a cult of personality : the people who choose to submit themselves to that personality. Ayn Rand is supposed to be about free will and choosing your destiny, any dumbfuck who turns that into an immobile cult icon isn't really processing the material mentally.

I am wondering what cult she was the leader of since she broke up any organization she was involved in.

I thought conservatism of the moderate / libertarian bent was about personal responsibility, something that would seem to be anti-cult. I don't see anything in Rand's thinking that disavows this.

her philosphy, on the face of it, would seem to be (as u say) "anti-cult". but her husbandry of the cult of her own majesty = something else entirely...

Ayn Rand is supposed to be about free will and choosing your destiny...

um, "supposed"

Nathaniel Branden to thread.

hahaha i didn't finish atlas shrugged but it was basically the most horrible and terrible book i have ever read. The only reason I got as far as I did was because about 50 pages in I hated her so much I wanted to beat her stupid book. I would indignantly read passages out to my bf at the time and he would laugh at them but I wouldnt think it was funny. I would be so angry! I used to throw it against the wall.

how many times can u throw 1 book before it is not book but some paper?

this was a pretty resilient paperback. i think it was held together by its awfulness. it actually still looks like its in good shape. btw one of my best friend claims this is his favourite book.

You must abandon this friend or eliminate him.

Using a copy of the book to accomplish the latter would be fitting, we think.

yeah, shit is annoying as hell. used to "enjoy" camille paglia in the same sense, but at least she's fun to fite with.

I feel like true members of the patron class -- you know, the ones that society would fall apart without -- would never write so badly. Being super into Ayn Rand is publicly admitting that you wouldn't know either a good book or a coherent philosophy if you accidentally tripped over one. Maybe it's not a cult, sure, fine, whatever. So it's some unreadable bullshit that's not a cult. If you want to motivate yourself into being all that you can be, you can read Aristotle and spare yourself slogging through these utterly artless train wrecks.

It is very much a cult, which we find admirable. All worthwhile points of view are fanatically followed. We find those on the opposite side worthy opponents. Those in the middle, mere dissenters or wafflers, not even fit to forcibly brainwash.

That said, all Objectivists must perish.

What about the Fountainhead? Her fans seem to rate that one more, they say Atlas Shrugged is kind of pretentious. I read that one but didn't finish, I must say I found it entertaining in a pulpish fashion. The style is very emotional, manipulative even if you're susceptible to that sort of thing.
As a psychology buff I have to pay attention, it tells me a lot about a certain 1950s mentality. I think that stuff was supposed to be mass market. Same with her "philosophy".

held together by its awfulness.

This is an excellent description of many things.

This is the problem I have with the whole Rand thing.

Other examples of popular culture make plot-references more generally, such as when in the TV series Gilmore Girls, Rory calls Lorelai "the Howard Roark of Stars Hollow" for being ruthless in a competition,[31] or Rory tells Jess about her love of the book and Jess expresses awe that she read it when she was only 10.[32]

The Fountainhead is read in many high school classrooms and has been a core work for the Advanced Placement curriculum.

In the epistolary novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the title character of Charlie is assigned The Fountainhead to read by his teacher, Bill, and later refers to the book as his "favourite".

In the Philip K. Dick novel and film adaptation A Scanner Darkly, a character attempting suicide picks The Fountainhead as an "artifact" to be found with his remains, his reasoning being it "would prove he had been a misunderstood superman rejected by the masses and so, in a sense, murdered by their scorn".

There is this theme when discussing or using (as Hollywood has done) Rand - that of the super bright "lonely" girl ...reading Ayn Rand and isn't that impressive. I suppose reading science texts or non-fiction or history is less sexy.

Not a literature snob but any high school teacher who makes The Fountainhead a requirement ought to be fired.

this is tossed-off but insightful i thought:

But the basic inverted Marxism at the heart of her ideology has become the central focus of both modern conservative thought and Republican policy-making. (That ideology holds that the world is fundamentally divided between virtuous creators of wealth and lazy parasites, the identity of whom is the reverse of what Marx believed.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/76735/ayn-rand-and-conservatism

ie i don't think she really understood capitalism. capital is not 'heroic'

How come in her books the protagonist keeps plugging away against mediocrity but never gets very far?

too many little people holding them back

"I only like big people"

Ayn Rand=fascinating to 11th graders whose have just been weaned off of Sweet Valley High and Hardy Boys novels (or whatever those children are reading these days)

big in india & i guess anywhere where ppl could feel threatened by egalitarian ideas

really? I hadn't noticed her popularity in India. where are you drawing that conclusion from (book sales or something?)

"I only like big people"

"It's capitalism that got small"

Ann Rind is so much easier to pronounce that Ayn Rand.

xp to shakey:

yeah lots of ppl I spoke to in india had read it, noticed the fountainhead in lots of roadside stalls, and it did seem to be well-known. poss just sheltered from rand in europe and maybe india is just more in sync w/ the US, or maybe a fad, but it was a bit of a thing.

any high school teacher who makes The Fountainhead a requirement ought to be fired.

no way. anything that inspires thought/discussion/argument is a-ok to read circa high school.

ie i don't think she really understood capitalism. capital is not 'heroic'

and i dunno, her heroicization of fat cats doesn't make less sense of marx's heroicization of the worker

any high school teacher who makes The Fountainhead a requirement ought to be fired.

no way. anything that inspires thought/discussion/argument is a-ok to read circa high school.

― a CRASBO is a "criminally related" ASBO (contenderizer), Friday, August 13, 2010 12:32 PM (2 minutes ago)

high school is far too short and there are waaaayyyy too many books that are actually good to spend time making teenagers read The Fountainhead.

working isn't heroic either!

ayn rand is turning into l. ron hubbard

high school is far too short and there are waaaayyyy too many books that are actually good to spend time making teenagers read The Fountainhead.

i guess, but it's one of the those books that teens, or certain teens, really seem to take so, which counts in its favor

i would LOVE to have read it in high school, just for the ensuing debates

ayn rand is turning into l. ron hubbard

I had to read Anthem in high school. it came across as a self-aware Choose Your Own Adventure book however with all the choices predetermined for you :(

We had enough debates with the following:

Siddhartha
Death In Venice
The Stranger
Johnny Got His Gun
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Sula
Going After Cacciato
Their Eyes Were Watching God
The Jungle
Heart of Darkness

I can't imagine throwing The Fountainhead in there, too

yeah, i'm no Ayn Rand fan on any level -- but i wouldn't object to having the fountainhead being read in a high school class. it isn't any more controversial than a lot of the books Dan just listed (though there is the rough sex/quasi-rape scenes which may not go over very well).

\it isn't any more controversial than a lot of the books Dan just listed

the difference is that the Fountainhead is REALLY SHITTILY WRITTEN whereas most of the books Dan listed are actually really well written

What?? You read those in high school? Holy shit. I can never tell if I missed all the notable literature b/c I took mostly science classes, or if my school was just crappy.

I mean with those other books you can delve into the style and composition and metaphors and whatnot, there's a range of analytical approaches you can take. with Ayn Rand it's strictly "how stupid/awesome do you think this poorly presented philosophy is"

well, "shittily written" is in the eye of the beholder. i don't think much of Upton Sinclair or Hermann Hesse as writers, either.

I don't really have any objection to teaching Rand in high school other than do you really want to give teenagers justification to act even more like narcissistic dicks?

I read about half that list in high school (either for AP history or for AP English) - although my list subbed the Invisible Man, All the King's Men, some others I'm forgetting at the moment...

x-post

i don't think much of Upton Sinclair or Hermann Hesse as writers, either.

I'll concede on Sinclair - Hesse tho? he was a much better stylist than Ayn Rand

I think we read the Plague instead of the Stranger

it's like, you already think you're the most important person in the world and should be able to do whatever you want, now here's a "grown-up" "philosophy" that says it's OK, go out and have fun!

wait, the invisible man by h.g. wells or am i to understand that you were taught ellison's invisible man in high school, in which case i am super-impressed and kind of awed?

upton sinclair has the advantage of being vv important and influential w/r/t actual issues of his day

again, matter of taste re Hesse. not to mention that there may be translation issues (German --> English, and all that).

Ellison (lol didn't read the Wells one until college for a genre fiction class). I think we spent like a whole quarter on it, it looms large in my memory.

xp

They should introduce The Most Dangerous Game into the schools

I forgot Native Son and Black Boy

there was also a Louise Erdman book but I can't remember what it was because it was super super boring

of course upton sinclair is a better stylist than ayn rand! i realize this stuff is subjective but ayn rand is suuuuuch a shitty writer.

upton sinclair has the advantage of being vv important and influential w/r/t actual issues of his day

^^^this. which is why we read it in US history instead of English, iirc

oh shit yeah we read Native Son too.

Light in August was another one.

am i to understand that you were taught ellison's invisible man in high school, in which case i am super-impressed and kind of awed?

we read the invisible man, wasn't even an AP class

public school in spokane fucking washington, too (redneck central)

sorta figured it was part of the standard american curriculum

no?

it is really not standard! maybe i am naive to be shocked but that is a super-hard book!

light in august is quite a book for hs too

totes. i <3 that one, would have loved to have read it in high school.

do a lot of ppl read 'death in venice' in HS? because that one stands out as far and away the most difficult of those texts, both style-wise and theme-wise.

ayn rand is so bad...i think my mom used to be into her work waaaay back when she was younger but now she finds her pretty reprehensible.

i certainly did not read death in venice in high school

we really just did shakespeare
macbeth
julius caesar
king lear

and also

pride and prejudice
oedipus the king

big focus on poetry in ireland tho

aye thee ould whiskey
and me sheep
make me life
complete

i certainly did not read death in venice in high school

10th grade IIRC

It was kind of an extra credit program concocted by our honors English teacher to combat the extreme boredom of some of us (two of whom now moderate this board, lol)

this horrible English teacher at my high school taught a senior elective called "political lit" only it turns out he was a crazy libertarian. as far as i know, the only female author he ever assigned in that class was ayn rand. >:[

can't even believe all these fancy books y'all read in high school

high school is just plain fucked up

at any rate re: Rand, I still stand by what I wrote upthread; regardless of how terrible we find her in 2010, I have at least one concrete example of how she inspired a dude facing a lot of discrimination and economic hardship growing up to get a PhD and run a lab for a Fortune 100 company and it was all very beneficial to my life as a child, so I am not going to hate

oh yeah we did a bunch of Shakespeare too - Macbeth stands out as the most memorable, cuz we were shown bits of the Polanski version and the Orson Welles version (which is awesome) in its entirety. Also Othello, something else... not Hamlet

oh yeah Midsummer Night's Dream

tbh i was one of the worst students of all time and basically never did homework ever (one of my best friends used to boast about not even owning copybooks for loads of subjects) and i used to just bring my own books to class and read them and wait for school to be over for good. i'm still so glad it is!

a terrible man for the studying

we werent allowed watch the polanski version bc my teacher said "unlike in the ACTUAL PLAY they show duncan being murdered, and i know that most of you wont bother reading this or even paying attn. to me right now or ever. but i cant deal w/ reading any essays where you describe the murder scene"

we did Julius Caesar in 9th grade, no Shakespeare in 10th grade (American lit), King Lear in 11th grade (best ever), and then senior year was electives and some years a Shakespeare elective was offered, but not my senior year.

it's like, you already think you're the most important person in the world and should be able to do whatever you want, now here's a "grown-up" "philosophy" that says it's OK, go out and have fun!

OTM. It's just a philosophy which allows people to put a fancy name on self-serving, self-congratulatory asshole behaviour. No wonder so many celebrities are fans - they have the same sense of entitlement as your average teenager. I fucking hate Ayn Rand.

lol we watched one of the older film versions of Romeo and Juliet in 9th grade, which the teacher apparently forgot to prescreen and therefore forgot that in the bedroom scene there is a fantastic moment where naked Juliet leaps out of bed and lunges for something behind the camera, filling the screen with boob

that would be the one with Olivia Hussey. that scene is forever imprinted into my brain.

she is v v pretty

i was one of the worst students of all time and basically never did homework ever ... and i used to just bring my own books to class and read them and wait for school to be over

oh hai me

i remember watching a pretty messed-up film version of edgar allan poe's 'the masque of the red death' in an english lit class, which involved a decent amount of gore and heavy duty incest.

the film involved that, not the class.

Good that we've moved on to Olivia Hussey's boobs though.

my sister did a room w/ a view the movie for her leaving cert (you can do a movie) in an all girls school w/ a nun for a teacher and they watched the dick-flopping-skinnydipping scene loads of times. we watched it as a family at christmas shortly after and my dad was shifting uncomfortably and my sister was all "oh yeah i forgot this used to seem kindof awkward before you see it a million times"

omar the one with vincent price??

I graduated college with a 2.4 simply cuz I have such a procrastinator's attitude that I flat out didn't show up to class and would just show up for tests and would skid by.

I remember we also watched a the end of a filmed stage production of "Oedipus Rex" where the dude playing Oedipus had to deliver his final monologue with hamburger meat in his eyes (because he had gouged them out, see)

we watched apocalypse now as part of heart of darkness study, which was ayokay with me

i still have never read oedipus rex should i y/n?

uhm isn't that bad for your eyes

we watched apocalypse now as part of heart of darkness study, which was ayokay with me

oh we did too, it made me actually appreciate the core story underneath the layer upon layer of distracting racism

uhm isn't that bad for your eyes

We assumed so!

xp you should read it if you feel a lack of greek tragedy in yr life. reading those things is fun but kind of a stilted experience.

it was this one, cad:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097844/

I'm starting to see why I was so bored in school. We read SOME of those books on your list, but only like 35%.

We were taught to write formulaic (re: boring and pedestrian) essays. Senior year, we were given an assignment for our Senior Paper to read one of a list of approved books, and we would do assignments and tests on it.

I chose Les Miserables, then got busy as over winter break I had 10 nights where I was performing so I got 30 pages in. Stupid teacher admits to me she's never read Les Miserables. The test was just us answering vague questions based on our reading of the book.

I used Cliff Notes for some of the answers, and invented the rest. I invented whole plot points that didn't happen and even characters that weren't even in the book. I got an A+.

if you get a good translation it is good

this one was great (also a breeze to read)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Oedipus-King-Greek-Tragedy-Translations/dp/0195054938/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1281721013&sr=8-5

we had to read antigone in 9th grade. (that's what it's called, right?) i liked it! i feel like a significant proportion of the stuff i read in high school was (self)righteous-woman-is-misunderstood-and-persecuted. i ate that shit up.

too bad it wasn't the vincent price one because that is a rad movie

thanks, plax!

oh just remembered we also read The Awakening senior year

As if on cue, from McSweeneys: OUR DAUGHTER ISN'T A SELFISH BRAT; YOUR SON JUST HASN'T READ
ATLAS SHRUGGED

When little Aiden toddled up our daughter Johanna and asked to play with her Elmo ball, he was, admittedly, very sweet and polite. I think his exact words were, "Have a ball, peas [sic]?" And I'm sure you were very proud of him for using his manners.

To be sure, I was equally proud when Johanna yelled, "No! Looter!" right in his looter face, and then only marginally less proud when she sort of shoved him.

lol that's why this got revived

it's been a while (like, almost 2 decades) since i've thought about it, but i did read some pretty heavy-duty books in HS. i remember four shakespeare plays (one per year); "crime and punishment;" "sons and lovers;" "billy budd;" "les miserables;" and "oedipus rex" are the ones that come to mind. we also read "anthem," which compared to those other books was pretty paltry.

Anthem is terrible, terrible writing

Yeah we did one Shakespeare play a year, too. 9: Romeo and Juliet, 10: Julius Caesar 11: Hamlet 12: King Lear

One Shakespeare/year, plus a senior research project on another. I did Much Ado About Nothing because the Branagh movie was recent and easily available at Blockbuster. Senior AP teacher threw in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead for kicks.

All I can remember from AP was Metamorphosis, Crime & Punishment, and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

we read Things Fall Apart to counterbalance Heart of Darkness

to repeat something i said years ago upthread: besides the (lack of) quality of anthem, what struck me at the time i read the book (i was 15) was that it was so OFF about what life in a communal/communistic society was REALLY like. i had family that had lived in a bona fide communist country (i.e., Poland) and anthem in no way was like what life was like there. and while Rand was Russian and not Polish, i seriously doubt that Bolshevik Russia was like what she wrote in anthem either. then there was the story's basic conceit about someone whose ego had been totally eradicated by a coercive communal society -- even at 15 and with no knowledge of psychology, i figured that there was something pretty fishy about that from a psychological viewpoint.

DOH we read Things Fall Apart too

also Cry, The Beloved Country was in there somewhere as an elective option on one year's reading lists

Haven't read any AR:

I don't think her fiction is that hot either but it is illuminating, again for its historic relevance. In the same way that detective fiction might be. I thought the "great books" model died with postmodernism.

It hasn't, and many of the detective novels are in no way historical curiosities - they are good, can be re-read and are still good.

xp = gotta say I might have to read Anthem

speaking about dystopian novels: we read animal farm and 1984.

eisbaer OTM about anthem

nobody is trying to take away your first person singular, ayn rand

lol I read Animal Farm and 1984 for fun in junior high

also read Flatland then

it's really no wonder that I only ever want to read trashy sci-fi/fantasy now

according to the wikipedia entry on anthem, there are apparently some thematic similarities w/ it and zamyatin's we (a book i've been curious about for a long time but haven't actually read). particularly w/ characters have numbers instead of names and a collective "hive mind" having some sort of hold over people psychologically. i would be curious to know if anyone has read both and just how similar anthem is to we.

We is a masterpiece. Anthem is a piece of shit.

Oh wow I was gonna start on We in a month or so. Might have to read this w/Anthem now, if I can find a copy.

I honestly can't remember any of the details of Anthem it's been so long - We I read (and re-read, and then wrote a song about lol) just a few years ago. it's the diary of an unreliable narrator who is working on the collective's project to send a rocket into space to colonize other worlds, everyone lives in a city that is made entirely of glass, privacy does not exist, sex is a random, emotionless act, there's intimations of a wild, natural world beyond the city's borders but no one ever goes there (or is allowed to). everyone has a number instead of a name. Major precursor to 1984, a bit stranger in its conception.

and to think she was writing this as a dystopia.

We read absolutely NO Rand in school.

The Fountainhead's one contribution to my life is that it gave me a reference for my pre-existing disdain for buildings with balconies stuck all over them. Whenever I see a new one being built, I think to myself, "Gary Cooper would dynamite that piece of shit."

There are very good reasons why something like The Fountainhead ought not be taught in an AP senior English course, the two most important are:

-it diminishes the value of the AP (college credit) course. Do you want to insult your students by sending them packing to college with an English credit worth less than what other high schools might provide? You may as well tattoo your students with "my high school is dumbed down shit" before sending them off to college. Not fair, snobbish, etc.....but you're supposed to prepare your students to compete.

-I personally would feel intimidated if a teacher (especially a male one) included something as ideologically biased and aligned with power as The Fountainhead. He may as well pull his dick out in class and ask who wants to blow him.

The job of a teacher of AP ENGLISH is to unselfishly prepare his or her students for college, to give them the best equivalent of a college credit he or she can. Concerned parents ought to tear that guy's nuts off.

hay
http://i38.tinypic.com/2ljky93.jpg

dead ringer for my grandmother

senior year, as I recall: Crime & Punishment, some Chekhov, parts of Milton & Dante, The Stranger, Things Fall Apart, Lord of the Flies (fucking hate that book), a couple of novels I have to have forgotten.

I think the non-AP classes got Randed.

I had to read Anthem in honors english. my classmates were walking around with blown minds

didn't read Rand in my HS (in california in the late 80's). I have a hard time remembering exactly what all we read outside of Great Expectations, Hamlet, Portrait of the Artist...there were several shakespeare plays but I've read so many later on in college I can't remember exactly what.

AP English - taught by closeted lesbian - included things like To the Lighthouse and Nausea. People taking AP English got bumped up and out of 12th grade English, whereas the AP students in history had to take modules from the 11th grade course in 10th. So I missed 12th grade's normal course with things like Macbeth.

Great Expectations, Romeo and Juliet, Lord of the Flies and 1984/Animal Farm were junior high assignments in our district. Other works assigned at my high school: Doctor Faustus, The Merchant of Venice, Notes from Underground, To the Lighthouse, Pride and Prejudice, Nausea, Murder in the Cathedral (my biggest extra credit scam was to cross-ref with Anouilh's Becket), Dubliners, Pygmalion, the Scarlet Letter, the Great Gatsby, the Odyssey, Julius Caesar, Oedipus Rex, Waiting for Godot, the Rhinoceros, The Idiot.

I suspect the only reason any schoolkid from the UK would have even heard of rand is because of Neil Peart from Rush espousing her outlook. I cannot imagine her books ever being taught in secondary school here, and even among victim-culture conservatives, she has no game that I am aware of. I tried reading one of her books, I forget which one, not "the fountainhead" (I saw the film of that one on TV, dreadful) found it literally unreadable, and as I mentioned upthread, I struggled through some of Wyndham Lewis' ouvre..

Whatever happened to that film of one of her books that Angelina Jolie was suppsed to be all over making? That would have potentially been hilarious.

atlas shrugged, you mean.

People have been trying to make that into a movie for many years, iirc.

I really wish someone would make a movie called Atlas Shrugged and it'd be less than a minute long with Atlas holding the Earth, shrugging, and Earth falling out of his hands and breaking into pieces on the floor. Roll credits.

Atlas vs. Godzilla

YES

LOL in high school I'd read/looked at too much Cocteau so doodled an Atlas in a tutu holding up Earth. See also this picture painted on back panel of black denim jacket that would probably get 18-year-old me busted for Columbine or terror today:

http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images_118598_409296_berenice-abbott.jpg

yeah i wrote some pretty alarming "personal fiction" in school that never seemed to worry my teacher

boy I'm still wondering what would have happened had I not intercepted the VHS I turned into my teacher once that mistakenly had lesbian porn on it.....

well it didn't mistakenly have the porn on there, it was supposed to, I turned the wrong tape in for extra credit, realized my mistake a day later...thank god she didn't watch it

That Atlas Shrugged movie is actually going ahead as a no-budget indie. There was a "teaser" released that includes an interview with the producer, John Aglialoro, that's so bad that some Objectivist blog was tearing it to shreds, but I can't find that link. But anyway: http://vimeo.com/13589866

My Cocteau gun jacket was just a subtle reminder to the sort of girls who looked like Rod Stewart in drag not to say shit behind my back.

I was writing a lot in school too - it did not worry the teacher I allowed to read it, who was like 'go get published' but when my uncle lined up a book deal for me I baulked at the nepotism aspect. However it did give me ammo for an annoying 11th grade English teacher who, if she criticized me in front of the group on spurious grounds, would inevitably be asked 'and your publisher would be?'

thank god she didn't watch it

you never know, might have turned into a hot date and some "extra credit" for you

The funny thing is that if you do a search, libertarians/objectivists are more excited about this than Sc1entologists were about "Battlefield Earth" even though it's destined to be 1,000,000x as bad.

xoist if you saw this woman, you'd know why I suddenly had the urge to blow lungbutter in my whole foods bag

Oh, snap, I found it: http://aynrandcontrahumannature.blogspot.com/2010/07/epic-fail-update.html

The comments are the lol-worthy part. Esp. this one:

By a happy chance, I was able to secure an exclusive interview with John Aglialaro, who fills us in on the upcoming "Atlas" movie.

Q: Mr. Aglialaro, what was the most important thing to you about bringing "Atlas Shrugged" to the screen?

A: The key to the movie is to start strong and close strong. So we're starting with a scene where Wesley Mouch, Jim Taggart, and Ellis Wyatt debate on CNBC. Well, it might be CNBC, or it might be CNN or Fox News or Headline News or Bloomberg or BBC or Fox Business or ESPN or TBS or FX or PBS. I can't say, obviously. But it's CNBC. And Wyatt is in a remote location, which we do with a green screen. And the movie is in color, by the way. It's a color film.

Q: In the clip I saw, Wyatt makes reference to "back-room shenanigans." Is this dialogue taken from the novel?

A: The syllables that make up those words are in the novel, but not arranged in that order.

Q: Are there any lines of dialogue that were taken from the novel?

A: There are lots of words straight out of Ayn Rand's text. Words like "the" and "and" and "of."

Q: Why did you fire the director you'd announced for the project and replace him with Paul Johannson just a few days before the commencement of photography?

A: When you have an opportunity to work with a super-talented guy like Paul, you can't pass it up. I mean, he's a double threat, both a writer and a director. Like Orson Welles. Or H.G. Wells. I always get those two mixed up. Which one did "War of the Worlds"?

Q: They both did.

A: Well, that's just confusing.

Q: How did your background as a purveyor of gym equipment help you to master the filmmaking process?

A: I learned a lot from the exercise biz. For one thing, I learned there's no pain, no gain. If we do this movie the way we intend to, sitting through it will be an incredibly painful experience.

Q: Do you have a favorite moment in the film?

A: There's a scene where Francisco has to tell Dagny that he can't give her the money she needs for the John Galt Line. And when I watched the actor we hired - who's an unemployed pizza delivery guy living on the beach in Santa Monica, by the way - anyway, when I watched him deliver those lines, I had a tear in my eye, a real tear. Because I realized I had just pissed away north of five million dollars on this vanity project. Who wouldn't cry about that?

Q: Any other emotional moments?

A: The scene where Dagny exchanges her bracelet for the bracelet of Rearden Metal. We had a bracelet made out of aluminium foil, spray-painted blue-green, and then we shot it in front of a green screen. It looks almost like a real bracelet. And it's in color.

Q: When can we expect to see "Atlas"?

A: The movie has nearly completed its lengthy three-day shooting schedule. After that, there'll be an extensive post-production period lasting at least a week. We hope to get the movie into theaters sometime next month, and then you can go there and buy your popcorn or your Twizzlers or your Gummi Bears or what-have-you and watch it on the big screen. That is, if anyone gives us a theatrical distribution deal, which is more than doubtful, considering that we have no stars, no budget, and no credibility whatsoever.

Q: Speaking of stars, at one time Angelina Jolie was interested in playing Dagny Taggart. What happened?

A: Well, you know, the economy and Lion's Gate and financing and studios and green screen. All of that. But if we had used A-list stars we couldn't have done "Atlas" as a cheesy no-budget independent film. And that was really our dream all along. You know, so it would be a piece of crap.

Q: Your producer, Harmon Kaslow, has an impressive list of credits.

A: Yes, Harmon has produced a number of major, significant, barely released movies like "Fatal Choice," "Boo," and "Jam." All of which were in color.

Q: You said the film has to start and end strong. Can you give us some idea of the ending?

A: It involves Dagny seeing Ellis Wyatt's house on fire, which will be done with a green screen. And then she rushes into the burning house, and there's this button flashing, and she presses the button, and there's a message from Wyatt, which I can't reveal because I don't want to spoil it --

Q: No, please don't.

A: But it's a great, great, great line that will make the rest of the movie seem almost tolerable, hopefully. Oh, what the hell. I'll spill it. Ellis Wyatt says ... "Green screen!"

Q: That pretty much sums up what this version of "Atlas" is all about.

A: I think so, yes.

Q: Thanks very much for your time, Mr. Aglialaro. I'm sure we all look forward to seeing "Atlas" in the super-discount DVD bargain bin of our local Rite-Aid very soon.

"The syllables that make up those words are in the novel, but not arranged in that order."

^^^genuis

That Atlas Shrugged movie is actually going ahead as a no-budget indie.

The one thing we see being filmed is a fake pundit saying that we "have plenty of oil here in the US" and that we are, for nefarious reasons, "still addicted to foreign oil." Despite the fact that both of those statements are both true and entirely beside the point, what do they have to do with the price of tea, I wonder? Or even the book, ffs?

if this means there ISNT going to be a big oscar bait adaptation of atlas shrugged anytime soon i am for it.

I don't really have any objection to teaching Rand in high school other than do you really want to give teenagers justification to act even more like narcissistic dicks?

Same reason teenage boys should be kept away from Catcher in the Rye.

i read my antonia in high school, fuck willa cather

i think the source of any and all complaints i've ever had about the public school system can be traced to the fact that i had to read pearl buck's 'the good earth' TWICE in three years.

i read my antonia in high school, fuck willa cather

― max, Saturday, August 14, 2010 1:37 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

;_;

I can't trust anyone who disses Willa Cather.

that's the sort of thing I'd expect of Alan Greenspan

And the movie is in color, by the way. It's a color film.

man they are really with the times!

Eisbaer you should read We...it's really great. I wonder how Rush would have treated it?

Ha, I actually first found a copy of We the Living in India when I visited at the age of 15. I don't know that much about her general popularity in India but e.g. this article does seem to suggest that it's a trend. It doesn't surprise me at all. After decades of possibly crude democratic socialism and protectionism, the country has been infatuated with a possibly crude capitalism for the past 15 years or so.

http://www.petapixel.com/2010/08/14/man-creates-worlds-largest-message-using-gps-and-12k-miles-of-driving/

Love those comments:

There's a fascinating conceptual symmetry here. Obviously this project involved a monumental waste of time, and reading Ayn Rand's leaden fiction and sophomoric philosophy is likewise a monumental waste of time, so perhaps Newcomen's message has deeper layers of meaning than he intended!

What a terrible name, Dagny Taggart. I love overblown romantic fiction!

How are you going to feel superior to Alan Greenspan without dipping your toe in some Ayn Rand. Anyway, as I said, VERY compelling media personality and somewhat juicy in biography.

The key to the movie is to start strong and close strong. So we're starting with a scene where Wesley Mouch, Jim Taggart, and Ellis Wyatt debate on CNBC.

oh i thought that interview was real, nm

av club interview w/matt taibbi

AVC: There’s an entire chapter in Griftopia devoted to systematically dismantling the character of former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan. It’s called “The Biggest Asshole In The World.” Maybe we should just start with that title.

MT: [Laughs.] There are three things going on with Greenspan, three reasons why I thought it was worthwhile doing that chapter, and doing it in that way. He had a specific role, as a politician, in the sense that he was one of the primary people pushing deregulation—and a specific kind of deregulation—that ended up being a major factor in the crisis. So there was that. Then there was the second thing, which was his role as the head of the Fed, which basically allowed Wall Street to bail itself out every time it got into a speculative disaster. And then the third thing was, he was really a symbol of the kind of mindset, the ideology, that sort of Ayn Randian belief in complete and total deregulation, and the cult of the producer, and all of that stuff. The superficial pushing of that ideology, on the one hand. On the other hand, the sort of backdoor use of the government as an insurance policy and welfare program for the financial-services industry. Those contradictions were so perfectly symbolized in Greenspan, I just thought he was the ideal way to start out the whole discussion of what Wall Street was all about. He had a specific role as a villain, and he also had a sort of general role as an ideological leader of everything that went wrong.

AVC: Oh, and you also call him “a lying whore.”

MT: [Laughs] You keep throwing out all these terrible things that I’ve said back to me. Now I’m beginning to feel bad.

AVC: You also spend a lot of time criticizing the cult of Ayn Rand and her acolytes. Greenspan was a devotee, heavily influenced by her books, and even spent time socializing with her. You, on the other hand, characterize Rand as “a bloviating, arbitrary, self-important pseudo-intellectual” and call Atlas Shrugged an “incredibly long-winded piece of aristocratic paranoia.” How influential are Rand’s ideas in the financial world, and why is that a problem?

MT: I think [she] is very influential, even if people aren’t specifically referencing [her books]. I just hear the Randian philosophy constantly when I talk to Wall Street people, this whole excuse that “Everything we do is okay, because we are the producers. We’re the productive members of society. Everybody else is a parasite, therefore what’s good for Goldman Sachs is good for America.” This whole mindset is so deeply ingrained in a lot of people in this particular part of America that I don’t think there is any way you can talk about modern Wall Street without talking about these ideas.

You know, maybe it’s not Ayn Rand in particular that’s responsible for it, but the ideas that are in her books are incredibly widespread. They’re important in the sense that a lot the things these people do they couldn’t do if they didn’t have some kind of intellectual justification for it. If you’re going to sell $30 million of worthless mortgage-backed securities to some pension fund in Minnesota, and you know that’s going to bankrupt some janitor who’s been saving up his pension his entire life, you can’t do that if you don’t think it all works out well in the end for everybody. This provided the moral cover for people to do that stuff, so that’s why I thought it was worth writing about.

How great would it be if Paul Verhoeven did a 'Starship Troopers' on 'Atlas Shrugged'???

so great~

i just saw several of my fb friends "like" ayn rand but fortunately more than that like "plugging the gulf oil leak with the works of ayn rand"

How great would it be if Paul Verhoeven did a 'Starship Troopers' on 'Atlas Shrugged'???

― Spencer Chow, Tuesday, November 2, 2010 7:26 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark

i've actually put this idea forward on ilx before. IT NEEDS TO HAPPEN

"The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages."

Skimming through "Anthem", and holy shit is this some clunky, unsubtle, political propaganda. Still kinda amazes me that such an elitist and anti-Christian author would be embraced by the US political right.

not at all surprised that that plutocrats and their groupies like rand. that they pretend to be religious and anti-elitist while doing so only makes good political sense.

Having bathtubs full of money is irrefutable proof of your absolute superiority to other people. And fuck that Christian ethic with its "sell all you have and give it to the poor" quackery; the man was clearly a nutcase.

One of my favourite things about American Christianity (and I guess the religion historically) is how it can be completely twisted around to justify that logic.

Of course, there's probably a connection somewhere between "I have bags of money so obviously I am superior/the deserving" and "God has blessed me with good fortune and I'm very vehement about religion so obviously I'm one of the chosen going to Heaven".

chick's crazy imo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_gospel

How Ayn Rand Ruined My Childhood

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4106/4953144021_74f1ed680b.jpg

One of my favourite things about American Christianity (and I guess the religion historically) is how it can be completely twisted around to justify that logic.

Here's some nice choice quotes from the Family Research Council's new political action committee:

Perkins typically doesn't discuss the Biblical justifications for his ideas. (FRC did not return calls from Mother Jones.) However, some of the speakers at the "FRC University" online lecture series provide a clearer idea of the Biblical justifications for opposing limits on corporations and the wealthy. One recent speaker was Jay Richards, who edits a magazine published by the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank that the FRC describes as its "sister organization." His book, Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem, is a free-market treatise aimed at the faithful. In his talk he maintains that the sanctity of private property is the preeminent Christian value: "You might call it an idea being made in the image of God."

"You get these funny quotes about people saying, well, 'Jesus was the first socialist,'" Richards explained. "If you read the Bible, this idea of private property is everywhere presupposed. There is not a 'Thou shalt believe in private property' sort of verse anywhere, but it's so fundamental that it's presupposed in two of the Ten Commandments. 'Thou shalt not steal' assumes that people have property that is legitimate and that should not be taken."

Another recent FRC lecturer offered a related interpretation of the Bible's calls for social justice. "Christ does not necessarily condemn the rich per se," said Mark Caleb Smith, the director of the Center for Political Studies at Cedarville University. But, he added, the good book does at times condemn the poor: "The Old Testament, especially in the Book of Proverbs, ascribes poverty to oppression, but also to other things like laziness, the love of sleep, the love of pleasure, the love of food, the love of wine. And so even Proverbs says, you know, sometimes you may be poor because of your behavior."

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/03/religious-rights-crusade-against-unions

I had no idead that rich people hated pleasure, food, and wine.

http://consumerist.com/2011/11/100000-atlas-shrugged-dvds-recalled.html

i saw some girl reading atlas shrugged on the tube the other day and she was on one of the first few pages and i wanted to be like seriously dont bother

i never read it. i think that some classes at my high school did have to read atlas or the fountainhead, though (by the same token, I didn't read Romeo and Juliet until my senior year in college).Do you think a high school kid reading this in a class would enjoy it, just as like, an interesting novel or whatever, without feeling the objecti7vism thing? like, a shallow high school leveo reading.

I keep almost wanting to start reading it, just to have the reference points down (dagny taggart? john gilch? something about trains?) but presently it's $12.99 in the nook bookstore and come on, Infinite Jest was only ten bucks.

Even if a high schooler isn't miffed by the horrible writing, it's hard to get past the objecti7ist thing when a character is monologuing about it for 40-odd pages.

yeah, i read atlas shrugged in high school and enjoyed it like i would a trashy novel. the philosophical implications went sailing over my head. when i got to the monologue at the end, i was like "wtf?" and never finished it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-cIEcBqgaA

i was bored last week and decided to look at the facebook page of the majority leader of the wisconsin state assembly, robin vos. if you've been following what's been happening in wisconsin for the last year, you'll know that he is a major player in the attempt to remake our state into a model of corporatist, cronyist, thoroughly corrupt governance.

the only "favorite books" listed on his facebook page?

The Fountainhead

Atlas Shrugged

in a single glance i realized that what i am dealing with is not some machiavellian, misguided, or merely corrupt politician. he's a moron, a case of dramatically arrested intellectual development, entirely self-deluded, a danger to the body politic. there's no changing his mind, nor even any real hope of communication.

it's really hard to believe that a large chunk of the GOP actually fancies themselves "randian" and admire the protagonists in her books. what sort of horrible malady is this? how did our country earn these dipshits?

by being a welfare state where the best and brightest are weighed down by the poor and the government from achieving everything the free market would allow them to imo

also not enough supertrains

this guy is in his '40s and has a powerful position in state government--and is on the same intellectual level as self-centered cretins i avoided in high school.

i mean i think any attempt to find consensus with or even compromise with these fools is doomed. i don't know if everyone realizes this. there's really no point in being polite about it, either.

Greenspan was basically the most consistently powerful man in the US for almost two decades. This shouldn't be a surprise.

yeah i mean that's state government for you, it seems to attract the most horrible ppl for whatever reason

i cant believe i'm just now realizing Rand Paul is probably named after Ayn Rand

welcome to hell

he denies that, actually iirc

i'm really tempted to send robin vos an abusive FB message. but what good would it do?

it's just a tragedy, really, as much as it is a scandal. i mean there's no hope for this guy. and if i tried to set him straight it would do fuck all.

only thing listed under robin vos's "activities": "calvin coolidge."

btw he's the wisconsin chair of ALEC (see http://alecexposed.org/)

i wish there were a way to photocopy this and stick it inside every single copy of this fuckin' book:

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles2/ChambersAynRand.php

Something of this implication is fixed in the book's dictatorial tone, which is much its most striking feature. Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind, which finds this one natural to it, shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: "To the gas chambers — go!"

i wish there were a way to photocopy this and stick it inside every single copy of this fuckin' book:

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles2/ChambersAynRand.php

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, February 17, 2012 12:19 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

worthy life ambition IMO

loved kurt vonnegutt as a teen, so i was shocked when it occurred to me, a few years ago, that "harrison bergeron", a story that impressed me greatly once upon a time, is really just ayn rand as satire.

I don't think you can dismiss Harrison Bergeron that simply. Equality of opportunities vs. equality of conditions is an important philosophical discussion that has been going on for a few hundred years now at least...

i'm not dismissing it, exactly, but i do think that its basic gist - that liberal/progressive attempts to create a "level playing field" are injurious to the competent and superinjurious to the supercompetent - is patently randian.

like, the randian response to the argument that "equality of opportunities vs. equality of conditions is an important philosophical discussion" would be that equality of opportunity = the "natural condition of man" in an unmolested "state of nature", and that any meddling with this = artificially imposed and destructive equality of conditions.

i just find it so bizarre that, like, ACTUAL POLICYMAKERS take this gunk seriously. shouldn't they be off blowing up public housing or something instead of bothering with the business of government?

Trouble with that National Review piece is that it really makes me want to read the book.

it's really hard to believe that a large chunk of the GOP actually fancies themselves "randian" and admire the protagonists in her books. what sort of horrible malady is this? how did our country earn these dipshits?
--flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist)

by being a welfare state where the best and brightest are weighed down by the poor and the government from achieving everything the free market would allow them to imo
--encarta it (Gukbe)

hilarious to think that the randian state is self-annihilating

This is a great evisceration of the book & the philosophy by a guy who's actually worked in management for a while. He points out that even when she wrote the book, she had no fucking clue how actual companies were run then, or even if she did, she deliberately set everything in this weird 19th-Century robberbaron model. Actual reality would have proven her point wildly stupid, and we can't have that, can we?

http://sites.google.com/site/atlassucked/part-1

i cant believe i'm just now realizing Rand Paul is probably named after Ayn Rand

really u missed our first 5000 arguments abt wheteher this is so?

but after spending almost four weeks reading every one of book's 1,084 pages – and enjoying none of them – I believe I have earned the right to say what I think about it.

lol.

Love the South Park 'ckicken lover' ep that mentions this.

god. i was dating * briefly * a girl in the fall who was trying to tell me what a great book Fountainhead is.

later in the night she went on to tell me the problem with the world is we do not look at enough (everything) in quarters (she's an accountant) and the problem of growing inequity is caused by immigrants.

wait you actually slept with her? Did you pretend you were Gary Cooper?

after that night, no (before, yes!). i actually puked after leaving her place that night.

she seemed somewhat dispirited when i told her that.

TT you should've kept up w/ her and gone undercover in the Randnadian underworld.

She was into the freaky butt stuff, wasn't she

ha haha

from my experience, conservatives = lousy lovers

Shame. Figured there would be great hatesmash potentch.

Wasnt she having an affair with a guy half her age, with her own husbands approval? Very weird situ.

i'm not dismissing it, exactly, but i do think that its basic gist - that liberal/progressive attempts to create a "level playing field" are injurious to the competent and superinjurious to the supercompetent - is patently randian.

like, the randian response to the argument that "equality of opportunities vs. equality of conditions is an important philosophical discussion" would be that equality of opportunity = the "natural condition of man" in an unmolested "state of nature", and that any meddling with this = artificially imposed and destructive equality of conditions.

― Little GTFO (contenderizer), Friday, February 17, 2012 1:39 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

iirc harrison bergeron was a str8 up send up of the randian ethos, like ahaha this is what these dumb motherfuckers believe but maybe i imagined that

The (female) head of the Objectivist Club when I was in college reportedly felt courtesans should be legal. I don't quite recall what made courtesans different from prostitutes, but I think she made a distinction.

Rand said it was only logical that she have an affair with Nathaniel Branden, and both of their spouses agreed to it. When Branden broke it off he and his wife were kicked out of the little Objectivist club. Xposts

iirc harrison bergeron was a str8 up send up of the randian ethos

sincerely hope that this is true

the part where h.b. declares himself king and demands that all obey him certainly has that edge to it.

The first hour of Adam Curtis' latest 3-hour video essay All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace deals with both Rand's sexual entitlement re Branden, and Alan Greenspan's membership in her circle. (oh and also motherfucking Bill Clinton finally turning the US government over to the market bubble, fuck him forever)

She was into the freaky butt stuff, wasn't she

― Spleen of Hearts (kingfish), Saturday, February 18, 2012 6:01 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I believe that Objectivism teaches that fucking someone in the ass isn't cheating.

i'm not dismissing it, exactly, but i do think that its basic gist - that liberal/progressive attempts to create a "level playing field" are injurious to the competent and superinjurious to the supercompetent - is patently randian.

I didn't know Rand at the time but I basically had this issue with "Harrison Bergeron" when I had to read it at 13. (Maybe I'd read it differently now?) Yet, Vonnegut was a socialist, wasn't he?

iirc harrison bergeron was a str8 up send up of the randian ethos, like ahaha this is what these dumb motherfuckers believe but maybe i imagined that

OK, if this is true, the point may have also been lost on my Gr 9 English teacher iirc. Would make sense though.

At least we can go to bed knowing Kurt Vonnegut was a humanist who believed in kindness, whereas Ayn Rand....was not.

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2005/may/05/vonnegut_lawyers_could/

Topeka — When the Kansas Supreme Court takes up the school finance case next week, it might well ponder a futuristic story from the 1960s by science fiction satirist Kurt Vonnegut.

Attorneys representing students from the Shawnee Mission district say the story "Harrison Bergeron" shows that a world of forced equality would be a nightmare, so unequal funding of public schools is OK.

Their legal brief says capping local taxes on schools was unconstitutional, and they cited the 1961 story, which depicts a future society where everyone is made equal by forcing impediments on anyone who is better.

"Nobody was smarter than anybody else," the attorneys quoted Vonnegut as writing. "Nobody was better looking than anybody else.

But in a telephone interview Wednesday, Vonnegut told the Journal-World that the students' attorneys may have misinterpreted his story.

"It's about intelligence and talent, and wealth is not a demonstration of either one," said Vonnegut, 82, of New York. He said he wouldn't want schoolchildren deprived of a quality education because they were poor.

"Kansas is apparently handicapping schoolchildren, no matter how gifted and talented, with lousy educations if their parents are poor," he said.

"It's about intelligence and talent, and wealth is not a demonstration of either one"

Exactly. Problem is that we have multiple cognitive biases telling us otherwise, and who you gunna believe?

Did any of yall have toread Rand in high school? I didn't, but I think some of my gt friends might have, which seems weird to me now that I've learned a little about her and the books.

Thanks for that, Abbott. I didn't remember the story very well tbh, and now I think my teacher didn't miss the point either, thinking back.

That's also a key problem in Rand, actually. In what I've read, her heroes are like pure disinterested scientific researchers or artists as if those people actually prosper most easily in free market capitalism. I've often thought someone should write a Randian story where the protagonist is a currency speculator or investment banker.

(My ex-gf had to read Anthem in high school.)

i didn't, but there was an English teacher at my high school who regularly taught her. i think he taught anthem. i can't imagine he would have taught the fountainhead or atlas shrugged, but maybe excerpts?

We had to read The Fountainhead in Advanced World Cultures (the 10th grade social studies class for smarties), but it didn't make much of an impression and I can't remember anything about the class discussion.

:( :( :( at a high school class teaching anthem instead of we

The (female) head of the Objectivist Club when I was in college reportedly felt courtesans should be legal. I don't quite recall what made courtesans different from prostitutes, but I think she made a distinction.

tbf to rand i was bound to resent any book foisted upon me in class (took away from time better spent memorizing issues of SPIN) and barely remember anything about the classics (quotation-mark worthy or not) assigned during those years.

:( :( :( at a high school class teaching anthem instead of we

― the "intenterface" (difficult listening hour), Sunday, February 19, 2012 3:27 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he taught we in a political lit elective that i actually took. but judging from the rest of the syllabus, i suspect he had secret conservative tendencies. also afaik ayn rand was the only woman whose work he taught. it was a private school; the teachers had a lot of leeway.

i went to kindergarten and first grade in the Shawnee Mission school district

:( :( :( at a high school class teaching anthem instead of we

― the "intenterface" (difficult listening hour), Sunday, February 19, 2012 3:27 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I studied 'We' at school for SYS (kind of senior year english thing) as part of my dissertation. I wrote mine on Brave New World, We, and Darkness at Noon. I thought that was really cool at the time, but in retrospect it's a pretty boring selection (though good books). The teacher who advised me hadn't read 'We', and he really enjoyed it, so I guess that was a good outcome.

Everyone I know who got into Ayn Rand as a high school student was because of that scholarship essay contest. I always thought I should set up a competing essay contest scholarship for a chance at $500 for reading, IDk, the SCUM Manifesto or something. If I could get it advertised in every language arts classroom like that Rand essay thing, it would be worth the $500 out of my, pocket every year.

the soul on ice essay contest

the amazon odyssey essay contest

Ayn Rand’s novels are inspiring and intellectually challenging. But they can also be financially rewarding for high school and college students.

and senators

I'm thinking that I've wasted too many years reading Flaubert and teaching lit when I could have read Rand and been Paul Ryan

President Obama said in public that Paul Ryan had "good ideas." When will he ever say that about any of us?

i'll settle for him saying that about an elected Democrat.

the soul on ice essay contest

― horseshoe, Sunday, February 19, 2012 11:09 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

omg

Ha, I read Soul on Ice in Gr 8 because it seemed so edgy. I remember nothing about it except some of the stuff about sex.

i think i read soul on ice my sr. year of high school or freshman year of college because my rad straightedge vegan hardcore friends were all praising it.

kids should learn about white privilege as young as possible imo

otm

i read huey newton's 'to die for the people' when i was 18 i was like 'otm'

Thans for sharing such a detailed firsthand account of your interactions and personal relationship with Ayn.

I first read her books when I was 18 and then later made a study of her life and philosophy. When I took my three teens to see Atlas Shrugged at the movies last week, I hoped the spirit of Atlas would touch them on an emotional level.

I believe the greatest contribution Rand made to the philisophical debates currently raging
in American society was to place the pursuit of Happiness in its proper sphere.

Her books gave me the courage to pursue Freebirth and self reliant Mothering. Weaning from medical enslavement has been the "Happiest" pursuit I have engaged in during my adult life.

If one is unaware that they are chained in captivity to a Socialistic Profession who believes they have authority over ones mind and body and that my body and mind exist to provide them with income, then it is impossible to disentangle from the chains that bind.

In 1990 I gave myself "permission" to free my body and mind from medical bondage and have worked diligently to make that desire a reality.

In freeing myself, I have also launched my children on a path towards Sovereignty in regards to their own health. Rand never wrote much about the enslavement of humanity through Socialized Medicine and as the tentacles of medical slavery wrap around the Families of America I pray her enobling philosophy inspires others.

In 1990 I gave myself "permission" to free my body and mind from medical bondage and have worked diligently to make that desire a reality.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b7/Serial_Experiments_Lain_DVD_Vol_00.png

Yep that's a crazy person. (Ayn Rand used Social Security and Medicare.)

In freeing myself, I have also launched my children on a path towards Sovereignty in regards to their own health.

:(

the pathos of comment spam

your kids are probably going to die of the flu. great job!

ayn rand's public private access show (i dunno how snobby we are about funnyordie, i am kinda snobby about it, but this was lol)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/opinion/sunday/the-quiet-ones.html

leaping out at the end like a scary jack-in-the-box.

that's maybe one of the most terrible things i've ever read.

People practice rap lyrics on the bus or the subway, barking doggerel along with their iPods as though they were alone in the shower. Respecting shared public space is becoming as quaintly archaic as tipping your hat to a lady, now that the concept of public space is as nearly extinct as hats, and ladies.

♫ the lady ayn rand is dancing with me ♫

“Sir,” the girl said, “I really don’t think we were bothering anyone else.”

“No,” I said, “you were really annoying.”

“Yes,” said the woman behind them.

“See,” the man explained gently, “this is how it works. I’m the one person who says something. But for everyone like me, there’s a whole car full of people who feel the same way.”

Why is it whenever I read one of these reported conversations that are supposed to prove some ricockulous right-wing point, that they're written in this stupid way?

People practice rap lyrics on the bus or the subway

this is obnoxious, but I counter it by wailing AHHHHAHHH, STARLINGS OF THE SLIPSTREAM at the top of my lungs

You got good flow, Morbz.

can we just go back for a second and revel in the hilarity of this sentence:

Respecting shared public space is becoming as quaintly archaic as tipping your hat to a lady, now that the concept of public space is as nearly extinct as hats, and ladies.

Just a bunch of bros in baseball caps, sadly looking at each other and wanking.

Plenty of beanie hats out there, but fuck tipping a beanie.

tipping your hat to a lady = invitation to your amish compound

my god

It's full of stars

"See," the man explained gently, "this is how it works."

http://i.imgur.com/pKmOTmn.png

If Ayn Rand hadn't flattered the wealthy and powerful so ardently and earnestly, she'd be 100% forgotten today.

worst photoshop ever

That's in Ayn's own handwriting, pen clamped in fingers cramped by hatred and frustration. Her autograph fetches a good price by those who don't understand what value is.

reminds me of

http://25.media.tumblr.com/649ca3396e55b9c25251beb4d0f0776a/tumblr_mf8h02Vrax1rtr3kno1_1280.png

Thomas, appointed to the high court in 1991, briefly touched on his confirmation hearings— which included accusations of sexual harassment — calling it "not pleasant," his intellectual development and his conversion to a conservative judicial philosophy that has guided his two decades on the court.

"Why was a black kid in Georgia reading Ayn Rand?" Thomas said. "I have no idea."

I remember the first time I heard of Rand - I was about 20! No one reads her in Europe. One of my Philosophy professors asked the room if anyone had heard of her and this US student raised her hand and identified as an Objectivist at which point the lecturer proceeded to do what can only be described as a half-hour postmortem hazing of Rand. Just really brutal, and fairly mean to this poor girl. Then I found out that people actually read her in America, which was just puzzling.

I just read Eon Colfer's book Screwed and the central character Dan McEvoy says he wound up with a copy of the Fountainhead at the end of some caper and learnt a lot from it.
Screwed is a current book by a writer I enjoy so not sure how happy I am to find that in it. Not very in short. Unless I'm missing some level on which it's not an endorsement.

Thought it funny that I saw that just after having read through this thread, since it was a couple days after when i came across the paragraph concerned.

Ex-army sergeant Daniel McEvoy is ready to say goodbye New Jersey's lawless underworld and concentrate on his new life as club owner and bona fide boyfriend. But when he's abducted and driven into the Hudson by a vengeful crime boss, he realises that the New Jersey underworld isn't ready to say goodbye to him.

If Dan is to survive, he will have to evade bad guys on both sides of the law and find the missing aunt who once taught him how to handle boobs.

i have no idea but on reading this blurb i wdn't necessarily take the protagonist's thoughts as authorial endorsement

if Rand wd appeal to anybody it wd be lunk-headed rugged individual action heroes

thisfuckingguy.jpg

http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/09/17/give-back-yes-its-time-for-the-99-to-give-back-to-the-1/

harry binswanger

binswanger

bins wanger

harry 'the bins wanger' binswanger

A+ trolling Harry "I defend laissez-faire capitalism, using Ayn Rand's Objectivism" Binswanger

so p much trolling is just this guy's thing?

Insider Trading Is A Right: Don't Shackle The Knowledge-Seekers

trolling is his Randian objectivist right PS. there's no such thing as society u dummies

lmao @ Don't Shackle The Knowledge-Seekers

sounds like a Rush song title

By-Tor and the Knowledge Seekers

for god's sake won't someone please think of the knowledge seekers

Hah before I was forwarded to that Forbes article I had to read a quote from Che Guevara.

i was just sitting in a restaurant with some people i didn't know, and the girl next to me started spouting some shite, and I said 'That sounds like some serious Ayn Rand shite to me' and she said 'OMG SHE'S ONE OF MY HEROES'. Later she said with a beam on her face 'I'm one of Cameron's babes.'

dinner voyage into abjection

Salient thread 4 U, Fizz:

Popular delusions and our duty to dispel them

it wasn't great, imago.

oh wait, bb (gr8 display name btw) i need to see this thread.

You are the only person who's got the reference so far. :-/

lol I was just reading this piece on Rand yesterday.

It doesn't mock the whole thing as much as I'd like it to.

You are the only person who's got the reference so far. :-/

he's a really interesting character. not all unsympathetic iirr. (became mildly obsessed when I was abt 20).

Half Cornish, you know! Also ginger. Patron saint of talented youths who squandered their vast potential!

Was gonna start a Pick A Bronte: Poll! thread on ILB but, um, apparently this is the ILX Bronte thread:

the Bronte sisters Porn book

Hmmm.

AR and megan mccardle are the two chicks libertarians dig. see, they're not sexist

oh and veronique de rugy. tax cuts pay for themselves

http://www.arpanetdialogues.net/vol-iv/

I am surprised to be in such a conversation. It feels like a deliberate test.

It's not real.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2011/04/so-reagan-signs-into-this-chatroom.html

nothing is real but john galt

well known, from wikipedia:

Rand underwent surgery for lung cancer in 1974 after decades of heavy smoking.[88] In 1976, she retired from writing her newsletter and, despite her initial objections, was persuaded to allow Evva Pryor, a consultant from her attorney's office, to sign her up for Social Security and Medicare.[89] During the late 1970s her activities within the Objectivist movement declined, especially after the death of her husband on November 9, 1979.[90] One of her final projects was work on a never-completed television adaptation of Atlas Shrugged.[91]

Rand died of heart failure on March 6, 1982, at her home in New York City,[92] and was interred in the Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, New York.[93] Rand's funeral was attended by some of her prominent followers, including Alan Greenspan. A six-foot floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign was placed near her casket

question: you would think that she, of all people, would have the motivation to not accept social security or medicare. so she must have been broke? i always just assumed she was rich because she wrote best selling books and traveled widely and hung out with a bunch of rich assholes. did she really whittle away her life savings so much that she had to accept help from the evil altruistic govt?

A six-foot floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign was placed near her casket

gangsta

A broke ass person memorialized by a giant dollar sign floral arrangement vs a richass mofo with a giant floral cross in a church, we live in a crazy place

Rand's funeral was attended by some of her prominent followers, including Alan Greenspan

gangsta

http://www.internetweekly.org/images/alan_greenspan_poster.jpg

Needs a Sgt. Pepper parody

https://scontent-lga1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xft1/v/t1.0-9/11825700_10153099759181475_682204531232852883_n.jpg?oh=fab9d63f7fef8d1ec06fcf9f73cfbeb1&oe=564D470D

http://billmoyers.com/story/media-morality-neighbors-cow/

neal gabler otm

https://www.thedailybeast.com/john-galton-wanted-libertarian-paradise-in-anarchapulco-he-got-bullets-instead

would crosspost to bitcoins thread if I could find it

john galton

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EAq-VzeXoAAsWX-?format=jpg